Mary and I worked together for a year or so at Good Vibrations in SF before I even knew she wrote. Then I heard her read at the Bearded Lady Cafe on 14th Street one night. It was a reading for “shy guys” or, ladies who weren’t on the louder-than-thou spoken word circuit that had grown so unbelievably tiresome by then. Her poems were so unsentimentally sincere and lyrical. I asked her for a manuscript for the series and we both kind of forgot about it until Mary and Lena got together after seeing a few of the earlier Midgets and decided to do a book together.
Mary’s been studying in the writing program at SF State for several years and is the cofounder of The Big Ballyhoo, an art show going up in SF next year.
Lena Wolff went to Mexico with Marina and me when Marina was pregnant with Ursen. I remember one day one of her legs just fell in this hole when we were walking down the street. Her entire leg was in this hole, and we always kind of had that moment from then on.
Lena just got her MFA from SF State and many of the drawings in the book were included in her final show, which was lovely.